Motorola Mobility won a second German patent ruling against Apple over their iCloud service.  The Mannheim Regional Court found Apple had infringed a patent used to synchronize e-mail accounts.

Presiding Judge Andreas Voss stated that “The court has come to the conclusion that the wording of the patent does cover functioning that were at issue here.”  Apple “wasn’t able to convince the court that it isn’t infringing.”

The ruling allows Motorola to block the sales of devices with access to the iCloud, as well as ask Apple for information about past sales and holds Apple liable for damages.

“Apple believes this old pager patent is invalid and we’re appealing the courts decision,” company spokesman Alan Hely said.

Apple clearly is in a losing streak, as they were recently rejected twice in their request to ban the sale of Samsung devices in Germany.

Samsung Confident With EU Anti-trust Probe

After two wins against Apple, Samsung is quite confident that the anti-trust probe set by the European Union will end well as it would soon find out that they comply with the rules.

“We believe that, upon the scrutiny of the facts, the commission will conclude that Samsung Electronics has acted in compliance with EU competition rules,” Samsung said.

Samsung is under investigation, as the EU believes that some of the patent lawsuits they filed against Apple were considered essential to wireless communications, which must be licensed on a fair and reasonable basis to any company, under an agreement formed by industry groups and, in Europe, sanctioned by the European Commission.

RIM Offers Free PlayBook To Android App Developers

Research in Motion opened their doors to Android app developers in time for the roll out of the BlackBerry PlayBook 2.0 OS.  They gave the Android app developers until February 6th to submit their repackaged apps.

But it seems like not many Android app developers were interested, so RIM’s sweetened the deal by offering free BlackBerry PlayBooks to those that port their Android apps. RIM’s  vice president for developer relations Alec Saunders made the announcement on Twitter.

Shh…. Android Devs – submit your Android app to BB AppWorld by Feb 13 and get a free Playbook –> tools here:http://bit.ly/w758Ci – @asaunders

Developers registered for the BlackBerry App World are entitled to a 16 GB Playbook if they repackage their Android apps  into the compatible BAR file format and submit it to BlackBerry’s App World between Feb. 2 and Feb. 13.  The repackeaged apps must meet RIM’s BlackBerry App World Vendor Guidelines.

Symantec Warns Of Mutating Android Trojan

After Symantec retracted their claim that Android.Counterclank was indeed an aggressive adware and not malware, the security software maker now warns Android users of malware that mutates every time is gets downloaded.

According to Symantec, “The applications morph themselves automatically in a few ways every time the threat is downloaded. In addition, manual modifications are also made every few days indicating that the malware authors are actively maintaining this malware family.”

These variants were identified Android.Opfake. and are used in malicious Android apps hosted in Russian websites. The sites hosting Opfake include links or buttons that can be used to download the malicious packages claiming to be free versions of popular Android software.

Vikram Thakur, the principal security response manager at Symantec, explains that the severity of damage, as well as how easily these polymorphic viruses can be detected and fixed, rely on the complexity of the polymorphism.

“If antivirus vendors place their detection on the executable and non-changing sections, all files would be successfully detected,” said Tim Armstrong, malware researcher at Kaspersky Lab. “However, if the Trojan’s executable code were also polymorphic, the challenge of detecting it would be more difficult,” Armstrong added.

HTC Gobbles Dashwire

Dashwire, Inc., the maker of the Dashworks platform that provides mobile and web applications enabling people to easily setup and personalize their smartphones, and seamlessly access their mobile content across multiple screens and services, has been acquired by HTC as they expand their reach to the cloud.  It’s a smart move for HTC, which had a less than stellar fourth quarter and is struggling to keep up with other Android OEMs like Samsung.

“Cloud services are key to delivering the promise of connected services to our customers,” said Fred Liu, president of engineering and operations, HTC Corporation. “People want access to all of their important content wherever they are on any device. The addition of Dashwire’s cutting-edge sync services and deep mobile cloud experience strengthens our ability to deliver these services in a more powerful way.”